The present invention relates to cleaning devices in the form of a broom, floor wiper, mop, squeegee, vacuum cleaner, or the like. Such cleaning devices are characterized by a horizontally oriented cleaning head that is attached to a handle that is usually provided in the form of a long vertical stick. The head portion is configured to clean a surface generally in the horizontal plane in a direction perpendicular to the long axis of the cleaning head.
Typically, in the case of a broom, the bottom side of the head comprises the cleaning surface usually in the form of bristles, hair or the like; in a mop it comprises a water-holding and/or absorbing material, such as a sponge or a plurality of fibers, cloth and in a floor wiper or squeegee it typically comprises a cloth, flexible strip, made of rubber or similar substance.
The width of the cleaning head of the cleaning device is generally its longer dimension. Accordingly this width of the cleaning head directly relates to the surface that may be cleaned with a sweep that may be affected at any one time. The sweep size is determined as a compromise between two considerations. On the one hand it is desirable to make the cleaning head relatively wide, so that fewer sweeps are needed to cover a given floor area. On the other hand, it is often desired to have a narrow cleaning head, so as to be able to sweep narrowly bounded sections of a floor, such as under furniture or in narrow niches. The latter need is particularly pronounced in homes and in offices and therefore most sweeping tools commonly used in such premises have relatively narrow cleaning heads. This may be contrasted to sweeping tools that are designed for industrial and commercial applications, whose heads are relatively wide, for example street sweeper. Yet it may often be desirable to have a sweeping tool, to be employed in homes or offices, whose head can be selectively wide and narrow; it may even be more desirable that the length of the head be settable by its user in a plurality of widths—possible in a continuum of widths between two extreme values, minimum width and maximum width.